It seems that now we’ve entered those short, busy days of winter where everywhere I turn I hear my friends bragging about how little sleep they’ve gotten. “I got three hours last night.” “Oh yeah? Well I went to sleep at five this morning.”

                I am left discouraged and upset for my perpetually drowsy classmates. I, too, know (perhaps not to such a great extent) what sleep deprivation feels like. Like most people my age, I am asleep around 10 or 11, and up by 6. Even after 5 days of this, I can still go home on Fridays and sleep for 15 hours.

                There is an obvious incongruence here, and I decided to talk to Ms. Meriwether, RN, from the Health Office to get some of the facts straight.

                As it turns out, high schoolers should be getting 8-10 hours, while we typically get 6-7 (3-4 at the worst). This kind of pattern is detrimental to brain growth, which explains why you can barely think when you’re “running on empty.” Sleep is a time for the brain to repair itself. The body regenerates, cell tissue repairs and neuron connections are reinforced.

                                                                                Coming into a school day from a sleepless night is agonizing because your brain activity has been impaired. You can experience memory issues, you can have trouble with basic problem solving and you can lack good judgment, clarity or even the ability to plan well. Your mood is at stake as well. Have you ever felt so numb from exhaustion that certain words escape you? That’s because the language center of your brain is also impaired.

                                Ms. Meriwether and I got back to talking about my 15-hour Friday nights. It’s possible, according to her, to catch up on maybe a night’s worth of sleep. But a whole week is taxing on the body.  Even if you somehow manage to “catch-up” on sleep, an ability that is heavily debatable, you can’t catch up on a week’s lost learning.  Sleeping for a long time on Friday and Saturday nights won’t reproduce the development, growth and rejuvenation that goes on in your brain Sunday through Thursday.

                                There is, however, hope. The most important piece of advice I found is to sleep when you’re tired. Take naps if you need to, but don’t sleep so long that you mess up your sleep schedule. You need to develop a schedule that allows you to have enough rest during the week, not just on the weekends. As Ms. Meriwether told me, “Our bodies are not indestructible.” We need to take care of our brains—we simply can’t function without sleep.